Hunter
by Lady Bitter Irony
Summary: What if Damien had set out to kill the Hunter before leaving for the Eastern Continent?


A/N: Well, I managed for quite a while without a disclaimer, but I do realize that's illegal, so...the Coldfire Trilogy belongs to C.S. Friedman. I have tried to change my name to C.S. Friedman, but my family didn't like it. I have taken steps to become C.S. Friedman's heir, but it didn't work and she's still living anyhow (thank God for that). So I'll have to settle for not making any money off this. I hope you enjoy, dispite the lack of slash (or is there? *subliminal suggestion*).

In the highest pinnacle of the highest tower of the black numarble castle in the center of Jahanna, like a prince on a throne in his court, the Hunter stood at a narrow window, staring blankly out over the Dark Forest, blanketed still by the fading night. The window faced north, but out of the corner of his right eye he could see something- something that burned.

He should go down, get out of the light, but somehow he couldn't.

He was waiting for something.

Gerald Tarrant closed his eyes and leaned wearily against the smooth stone of the window. It had been over a month, hadn't it? Why did he want...

Why did he still hope, was what he should be asking. Since the events of the past year, the Hunter had stopped looking into his motivations. Too often, he learned he couldn't fool himself well enough anymore.

He was just about to give up and take the stairs down, down to the lightless crypt like the grave he should have lain in the past millennium, down out of the growing light and the danger, when something from the back of his mind sprang to life, causing him to start and grasp the window ledge for support. A channel from the past, from the time he had been trying so hard to forget and yet desperately hoping was not all gone. Tarrant bit down a hiss of…he shouldn't have been surprised, should he?

The question echoed over the Forest, changing its meaning as it did.

_Should he?_

#

If the damn lantern wasn't shaking so hard maybe the shadows would hold still. And maybe if he stopped twitching the shapes in the corners of his eyes wouldn't move. Maybe if it wasn't so dark the horse wouldn't keep stumbling.

It could be, but Damien doubted it.

Not for the first time he regretted his decision to come here, to the Forest, before setting out for the Eastern continent. Now that he had entered the Hunter's domain with the intent to kill, what chance did he have of- no, not of winning, not of completing his task, he had given up all hope of that long ago, but what about surviving? Could he face the world, knowing he had bowed out like a coward when he had a chance- no, not a chance- a hope? A wish? How could he face the world, knowing such evil still roamed it because of him?

Except- he already did.

All the same, he was glad he had left Hesseth in Faraday. If he failed and died here, at least one person would remain who had the knowledge and resolve to destroy the former master of the One Who Binds, the one who had warped the rakh into the Soul Eaters, the one who threatened Damien's ideals and his beloved Church even more, perhaps, than the one he had come here to destroy.

If he could.

Something long and glistening black slithered across the trail, causing the horse to rear and throw Damien off. He landed hard on the ground, lantern clipping off a chip of rock as he dropped it, hearing the pounding of three-toed hooves through the earth as the panicked animal ran off. Damien pulled himself up with a hand on a sturdy branch, only to realize the helpful plant was really a thorn bush. Cursing under his breath (he would have scars from the one time he had raised his voice in the Forest) he wrapped the injured hand in his shirt, which quickly became damp and slick under the grime already coating it. He peered into the darkness of the trees, looking for the horse with not real hope- and found the Neocount of Merentha standing calmly behind him.

"What the vulk?" he gasped.

Gerald Tarrant smiled. "Reverend Vryce. So nice to see you again."

"You took your time," he muttered. He had wandered in Jahanna for- it was hard to tell time without the sun- was it three days?

Three days was the amount of time the Hunter gave his victims to escape. Before they became his forever.

The Hunter's smile did not waver. "I thought I would give you time to…become acquainted."

"Thanks, but one tour was enough."

The gray gaze settled on the lantern recovered in Damien's uninjured hand, miraculously unbroken in the fall. "You came better armed the last time."

He shrugged painfully. "Yeah, well, Calesta kind of took care of that. I'd think you'd be grateful to the son of a bitch."

A strange emotion passed over Tarrant's face, and he changed the subject. "You're injured." The Hunter came to Damien's side and gently pulled out the wounded hand. His touch was chilling, but at least it dulled the pain.

"How observant," Damien muttered. The sight of his sword hand torn and bloody was not what he needed now, with his sworn enemy beside him.

Tarrant smiled and withdrew a few paces. "You're making it pretty damned hard to help you."

"That's what you came to do?" He snorted. "Help me? You can't Heal, and even if you could, why would you?" He glanced at Tarrant's belt as he spoke. The coldfire sword's embroidered scabbard was not there. Nor was the pistol he had worn when Damien first met him.

The Hunter was unarmed.

He doesn't need physical weapons to kill you, Damien reminded himself. This place was the Neocount's greatest experiment, where the very trees grew to his will, where entire ecosystems thrived- and died- on his whim.

"There's a thorn imbedded in there," Tarrant warned.

Damien pried it out while his hand was still numb.

"What's it from?" The Hunter asked. When Damien pointed it out, he nodded to himself. If it were any other man, Damien would say he looked relived. "You're lucky. That one isn't poisonous. If it were one of those-" he nodded to a wicked looking shrub, "Or that," a tall, thin grass with something purple on its blades- "You'd probably have lost the use of that hand by now. If you hadn't died." He frowned.

"Does the thought disappoint you?" Damien asked.

"A little." The Hunter drew closer. "I must admit, Reverend Vryce, that the thought of having to kill you is one of the most unpleasant I've had in a long time." A slender hand reached behind Damien's back, closed over the hilt of the priest's sword. Damien looked into the guileless gray eyes, finding himself unable to move. "But not half as unpleasant as the thought that something else might get to you first." He drew the sword and stepped back a fraction, his motion as smooth and cutting as the ring of the blade echoing beneath the cavern of trees. The Hunter held the sword up so that the sharpest part was facing Damien, each gray eye observing him from beside a wall of steel. The lantern light reflected in the silver pools.

Damien waited for the blow to fall.

The words of a hundred different prayers flew through his mind, but none of them could last under the assault of the shear terror of knowing that your life was coming to an end, that this was your last chance to do something and there was nothing you could do. At last he gave up and studied the face before him. He would have an eternity to commune with his god, but he highly doubted he would ever see Gerald Tarrant after this life.

Several emotions flickered in the Hunter's eyes, two liquid pools in a carved face of solid marble. Damien couldn't recognize any of them. Either they weren't human in the first place, or they were so far gone that they bore no resemblance to their original form.

Then Tarrant laughed harshly and threw the sword away. It fell to the ground, a thick padding of leaves preventing it from making a sound.

"I can't do it," the Hunter whispered, scorn at his weakness evident in his voice. "I thought about what it would be like, to destroy you as I have destroyed others, out of hunger or vengeance or to remove a threat. I thought of how I would be free of your prying questions and warped logic and above all your damnable humanity. And now I can't. Why?" His gray eyes turned their accusatory gaze back to Damien. "What makes you so different from a thousand others?"

The priest faced the Hunter for a long moment, his own thoughts barely connected. When he finally spoke, it was from pure instinct. "I can fight back."

He twisted one foot between the Hunter's legs, sending the Adept sprawling as Damien dived for his sword. The blade was at Tarrant's neck before he could move to stand, drawing a single drop of blood. The black bead slid down the sword like dew on a blade of grass, to sink into the sick earth of the Forest floor.

The look in the Hunter's eyes was human and unmistakable. Pure, unbridled fear.

The Hunter, this demon in human form lying powerless before him, preyed off fear. His victims lingered in terror for days before they finally died, their hearts and spirits unable to bear the crippling crescendo of fear that had become their existence.

If this was not evil, what was?

"Do it, then!" Tarrant hissed. "You came to kill me, so kill me and be done with it, damn it!" Was the fear gone, or did it only seem like anger beneath that ice-cold façade?

_Kill me and be done with it. _Yes. Yes! Everything in Damien's cried out in agreement, yes, the Hunter was evil, he must be destroyed. Do it!

_A child's soul opening like a flower to reveal the nectar of utter darkness within… _

_The killing power of the coldfire in a rakh's veins… _

_The simulacra, innocent people forced to die in their place… _

And what of the greatest evil, the one that took place here, in the very place he stood?

_The Hunt… _

Gerald Tarrant was the Hunter who fed off fear. Didn't he remember the master of Lema?

_Buried beneath fallen rock and earth, beyond light, beyond hope… _

_The Hunter's hands digging him out, supporting him, leading him back to the surface… _

No! He fed off Ciani!

_And then went with them to rescue her, had actually forced them to accept him, had almost died… _

_Sunlight streaming down in a golden holocaust, destroying Soul Eaters and Hunter alike- _

"In the rakhlands," Damien murmured aloud, "you risked your life to save us."

"It's so good to know my sacrifice was appreciated," Tarrant murmured sarcastically. Even the threat of imminent death did not appear to make a lasting impression on him when he felt ironic.

"I thought you were dead."

"And must have been so disappointed to find you were wrong." The Hunter's face twisted with fury, any beauty it normally possessed lost beneath the rage.

"I prayed for you, Hunter! Out of some twisted hope that what's left of your soul could be saved. By me..." Damien could feel the bitterness drip from his voice, cold and dark as Tarrant's own blood.

"I see you find it very difficult to make up your mind here," the Adept said finally, and there was such scorn in his voice that it was hard to believe he was trapped at sword point. "But really, entertaining as you misguided attempts at my salvation are, Vryce, taunting before the kill isn't really your thing."

"No," Damien agreed. With a flick of the wrist, he pulled back the sword and swung it over his back into the sheath. With his hand free, he reached down and half-dragged Tarrant to his feet.

He couldn't read the emotion in the gray eyes. Relief? Anger? Something else?

"You aren't going to get another chance, you know," Tarrant warned. "Never one so…clean."

"Our opinions of clean kills may differ somewhat," Damien offered dryly.

"But…you swore you would kill me, priest. Or at least," he amended sardonically, "That you would try. So why have you changed your mind?"

"Not for any reason you could understand, Hunter," Damien said, not meeting the Adept's eyes. "But anyway, this isn't over yet." Trying to put as much bite as he could into the words, he added, "I may get lucky."

But he knew the Hunter could see right through him.

"Am I to believe," Tarrant hissed, "that you would forsake your word for something as…as weak, as ineffective, as pity?"

"Yes. Pity for you, and for the man you once were. And could be again, Hunter."

"No, never again." The former Prophet's voice was soft. "But I thank you for the thought." Slowly, he came to stand beside Damien. "If you…truly intend no harm to me, I have no reason to kill you. I will lead you out-"

"I was hoping," Damien interrupted quietly, "That you would join me."

"What?" Tarrant was silent for a moment, thoughtful. Then he shook his head, as if shaking off thoughts. "I gave you my answer before-"

"You've healed since then."

"After a month. And feeding-" Damien could not hide his fury, though he knew about the Hunts already. The Hunter chuckled. "Good. You see- And you see why I couldn't possibly take you up on your invitation, generous though it may be."

"I'll feed you," he offered. "Though the channel."

Tarrant paused. Damien felt something ancient, malevolent, and very cold brush against his mind. He stood perfectly still, rooting himself to sanity and the forest floor, until it withdrew.

"Yes," the Hunter whispered, "I do believe you would. And I don't suppose I need to worry about being stricken helpless on the deep ocean…" He peered at Damien strangely. "You've saved that room?" When the priest nodded, he said, "Don't bother."

There was silence. Damien was wondering whether he should dare take another breath when Tarrant explained, "I'll stay below deck. In the hold. Somewhere it's dark permanently."

Before Damien could speak (and say what?) he added, "Give me a day to get everything in order. I'll meet you at the edge of the Forest as soon as it is dark." He began walking. "Come. Mordreth is this way."

Damien followed the Hunter in silence all the time. His three days of wandering had only led him a few miles into Jahanna. On foot, they reached the Forest's edge just at dawn. He turned to where Tarrant stood, back in the darkness. Inelegantly, he offered his hand. After a pause, the Hunter took it.

"Thank you," Damien said.

Tarrant smiled, to himself it seemed. "Thank _you_." And then he was gone.

"Until tomorrow, Hunter," Damien whispered. Then, a little louder, he called, "And if you find that vulking horse, don't hesitate to bring him back with you!" If he thought he heard laughter, it could only the Forest playing tricks on him.

It could be, but somehow Damien doubted it.


End file.
